Rewarding In-Game Banner Ad Clicks with Tangible Incentives

Mobile games in the past years have become a new, growing channel for advertisers to reach their customers. The wide spread use of mobile devices, such as smart phones, tablets and PDAs, facilitates the delivery of a variety of highly targeted interactive advertising messages including the use of mobile games as a media. As the phenomenon is new, the literature on mobile in-game advertising is very scarce. The objective of this research is to bridge this gap by studying the consumers’ general attitudes towards mobile in-game banner advertising (IGBA) as an advertising format and how effective is reward incentives affects the game players’ attitude towards banner advertisements and consequent actions in the mobile game context. A survey research was completed in October 2012, with 426 responses from Finland. The results show that tangible and flexible reward scheme with a link to location based rewards where mobile gamers can redeem physically by converting the points achieved from their game plays, are effective to positively affect their attitudes and intention to take actions.